


Prog

by goodloser



Series: OC stuff [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, First Meetings, Gen, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25975324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodloser/pseuds/goodloser
Summary: Deformer comes to enlist the help of a once so-called fortune teller in his quest for power.
Series: OC stuff [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885093
Kudos: 1





	Prog

Despite little more to go on — to keep him occupied — than the burn-and-blood prints etched into the insides of his hovel, Foresight had known this day was coming for a long, long time now. He hadn’t carried this knowledge as a  _ hope _ around inside him like a newlight to keep him warm through the winters. He hadn’t been told it neither. There’d been nothing to indicate it was going to happen whatsoever.

Other than Foresight’s own statistics programmes, of course.

He’d been a dried dreg in the cube of society from even before the war, and it changed little; he shuttled from hideout to hideout, and he lived on wastes, but he still knew how to  _ determine _ things.

He was never sure who he’d angered (Inus, likely, but there’d never been a shortage of enemies in the old, old Cybertron) but whoever it was — perhaps all of them — had sneered at him not long before his  _ operation. _ He was observant yet, but it was long ago enough that the memories had started to curl at the edges like a fading slide of datafilm.  _ ‘Fortune tellers will always be in short supply’. _ Yes, that was it, and Foresight had replied in that cool almost-joking way of his,  _ ‘Yes, I predict they will.’ _

They’d taken his hands and his face for it, as he knew they would.

But he’d be having the last laugh if he cared for such things; Inus and his company were surely long dead and all memory of him razed save for Foresight’s own detached disdain. Inus was nothing more than a footnote on the footnote that was Foresight.

It wasn’t as if he’d been waiting for today to happen. It would happen, yes, but he didn’t spend every empty day with vents bated for the right shiny-coated mech to stroll through the door and offer him his life back.

He didn’t want his old life back, really. It was as gone as the Cybertron he’d known and the Cybertron that’d become of it.

He’d made peace with his non-face as much as he had the encroaching war. His peace was so all-encompassing it was the sole reason why he’d fallen into such incredible disrepair that the cycles blended into the same muted colours of pain and struggle, and were he a poorer mech he’d wonder if he’d perish before today came, and were he even  _ poorer _ he’d believe he couldn’t because today was as predetermined as everything else he made out to be.

To put it simply, it was what it was.

He was leant against the wall of his den on Duruma-J. It was as unremarkable as any of the others: an uneasy footing of rubble crunched between leaning walls. It was the hideout of some scouts or soldiers or someone-or-other, killed in some kind of raid before this part of the planet had been carpet-struck with ionic rays. Which side had been which, he didn’t know.

And he was passing the time by telling a story. Foresight spent most of his days mumbling to no ears but his own. Sometimes it came from within himself, but usually he talked about caricatures of the people he once knew and the statistics he once logged.

A shadow darkened the already-dim mouth of the building.

The voice that called was deep and confident, yet pricked with caution. It was a stranger, then. “Foresight?”

“I know you, mister.” Foresight’s quiet reply came humourless, yet it was anything but.

For a moment, the figure didn’t budge. It was an odd rectangular shape on legs — obviously bulky kibble — yet the person himself was tiny, so he couldn’t be much in the way of warrior or even commander-class. Already, Foresight’s cells were blinking in thought.

Anyone else would be bothered by such a declaration, maybe, but this person stepped forward; faceless, but not unreadable. He carried himself with the haughtiness that underlied a hidden strength.

“Good work. You know why I’m here, then?”

Yes, of  _ course _ he did — a paltry request for the once-named  _ Oracle of Olsorn. _ Foresight wasn’t typically someone people wanted to be around without needing something from. True, to even the philosophies of Egon people did naught for others that they wouldn't want done to them. Cynical, yes, but he knew that better than anything. "A prophecy."

"More than that." The stranger had a smirk to his voice. "An assistant, why not."

Yes, why not. "And what'll I get in return, one has to wonder." He knew the answer before it left his vocaliser.

"Prophecise that."

Foresight leant forward. "You're not a warframe; that much is clear. Yet you come seeking me out anyway. You want to be powerful. You want to feel like every tank and shuttle, my sir, and you want to prove them wrong. That even a little car like can lord it over them. And you'll share that power with me, and you'll reward me handsomely, and maybe you'll even give me a face back, although I care little for it."

The stranger shuffled on his feet. He was obviously uncomfortable with such a reading. "I c—" 

"Very well."

"... What?" 

"I, Foresight, will join you." He leant back against the wall. "I crave not money or power. I've had both and they were fleeting as I wasn’t. I want to be entertained. Come, sit."

The stranger hesitated again, but he did come. There was a grimace beneath his mask; a wrinkled nose as he was better able to look Foresight over. He pulled a cube from his subspace. "Blimey, you look terrible. Here's something for your trouble."

"I have no reason to look better. This stopped bleeding long ago." He gestured to the hand-cauterised shell of his arm. "Let me tell you a story. What is your name, young sir?"

"Deformer." He cocked his head. "A story?" 

"It's all this one can do now, now that I have few travelling companions. Yes, sir, everyone I once knew has left me. I was there to see the Ark."

Deformer waited patiently. He wasn't sat on the floor; squatting, rather. He cared about his finish, was what Foresight inferred.

"Do you know much of legends, sir?”

“Not really my thing. I’d rather be one.”

What a preposterous answer. “Long ago — over seven million, longer than you can understand, young one — there was a vast civilisation spoken of in hushed tones in the Beryllium Muds. It was ruled gently and kindly by two nobles, joined as conjunx. Noble Tributon had travelled far and wide and brought great wealth to the citadel of Pyrex. Fair Sinus had worked tirelessly with her two hands to build the citadel itself, and keep it safe from trespassers. They were beloved.”

Deformer leant in closer. “But they were bad, right? Corrupt? Come on, there’s gotta be a twist.”

“Incorrect. Merely, that every cycle when the Sun disappeared beyond the horizon, they watched the ozone lake’s surface shimmer until one day glyphs appeared within and promised an heir to their house.

A mandate from Primus, clearly. The citadel were elated, but the Nobles silenced them, saying they must work for this. You must work for all. And for ten megacycles Tributon picked hydrogen with his bare hands for the heir’s body, and for ten megacycles Sinus gathered solar winds for the heir’s soul, and for ten megacycles the people harvested from Cybertron and gossipped, for what greatness could an heir of their Nobles bring?”

“None of that sounds possible.”

“Forgive my embellishments.” He gave a slight bow. “When the Sun reached the height of its arc on that tenth megacycle, Tributon built his hydrogen into a body, and Sinus washed it with her winds, and the citadel buried it again. They pulled out their heir.

Years passed.  _ How beautiful, _ said the people, and they clamored to touch him.  _ How intelligent, _ said the people, and they babbled questions for him.  _ How talented, _ said the people, and they scrambled to see his finest statues.

On the tenth year, the Heir suddenly died. The Nobles brought him out wrapped in the softest alien silks for all the mourn. The citadel weeped until they saw him.

It was an empty manmade.

The people realised that all along they’d misseen his face and misheard the air blowing through his body and misread the movements it didn’t have. They’d simply poured so many wishes into this organic carcass that it had appeared to be everything they’d wanted.

And that sundown, when the Nobles watched again the ozone lake, they saw the writing reappear and realised it had been nothing more than the gasses waving under the tranquil moon.”

Deformer was silent.

He stared for a while, first at Foresight and then the ground, rubbing his chin in thought. Foresight knew he was trying to process; to understand; to not immediately reject the face value and look like an idiot in the process.

“I’ll... “ Finally. “I’ll bite. What’s the moral of this story?”

“Who knows,” Foresight shrugged, but there was a twinkle in his optic that glinted off Deformer’s visor. “One could interpret it as wishing and receiving a falsehood. Or one could interpret it as authenticity meaning nothing if you believe — that the spark is more than the body. What do you think?”

Deformer grumbled, “If it means that I’ll get what I want just by hoping for it, I’ll take it.”

Truthfully, it was a tale about Foresight. 


End file.
